all the world is turning to noise
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "Do you presume to govern my heart?" — A boy from the red room can only tell lies. — crazy ensemble fic, klaroline but with extra shameless multishipping, Captain America MARVEL AU. I regret a lot of things probably.


**disclaimer:** i would like to apologize to everyone who ever loved me, but i am a sham. i regret to inform you that i own nothing. i devour your surprise with guilty joy. i have a problem. i'm a liar. lock me up. take me away. away, i say.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> to melissa, this was your birthday fic. then i took it and ran away with it. sorry. no monogamy here. look awaaaaay. and also hannah who has been nothing but an encouraging force in my life and who DID A CAROLINE CAPTAIN AMERICA MANIP WHICH I WILL NEVER GET OVER. OMG IT IS BEAUTIFUL. SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. I'LL POST IT UP. YOU WILL DIEEEEE FROM ITS PERFECTION.  
><strong>warning:<strong> klaroline, but also - NOT SOLELY KLAROLINE. PERHAPS, NOT EVEN MONOGAMOUS KLAROLINE - but (gasp!) all the multishipping fervour of a shipper who has been burnt too many times. crackships, maybe even some OT3s. basically this isn't going to be any fun unless you keep your horizons open peeps. like if you're in here for sweet, uncomplicated klaroline luvin', man proceed no further. have no expectations plz, you're only gonna hate me as i, with relish, fail at even trying to try meeting any of them.  
><strong>notes: <strong>no.  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> friendly reminder that i am trash.

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><p>.<p>

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><p>The Perfect Soldier program was not simply about creating a military grade machine that could masquerade as the world's white savior, they chose a woman. Why stop at propaganda? A couple of heads around a table, guys in intel who'd survived the martime might of the British and were still now seeing the Russian bear rear its head – they didn't simply want a super soldier, brawn was all well and good for now, but what about after the war? They wanted a Matta Hari.<p>

Pretty, blonde. Private Gilbert smiled at her the first time she ever saw her, warm and easy, like sweet honey – too lovely for her own good. Was she cataloguing then, what Caroline was? Good Christian background, racially inoffensive features, blind faith in Uncle Sam and Apple Pie… check, check, check.

Except, no? They should have taken Stefan. Everything would have been different.

She wouldn't have had to pretend so long that she was good at taking orders – and she was good at taking orders – but she lost her blind faith the moment Stefan was taken, and the rest of it seemed to plummet out of her with him. When he fell.

It's 2013. They carve her out of the ice. When she breathes in she can taste exhaust in the back of her throat, has to grab the arm of the man by her bedside when she starts awake. She's been asleep, they say, for a very long time.

_Come on girl, America needs you_.

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><p>The muscles of her face are straining with the urge to slam Klaus's head against the table but she clenches her fist and breathes through her nose, temper flaring to a thousand degrees as he gives her a patronizing run through of the 21st century labyrinth that is the internet. "Damn it, Klaus," she locks her jaw, puts her hand on her hip, slides it into her pocket, before leaving it flexing awkwardly behind her back. She doesn't know what she was <em>thinking<em> when she agreed to put on these ludicrous things – Caroline's not exactly gotten the free weekend required to get a handle of the fashion of the times, all she'd known before the military were baby doll dresses and minted bobs, since then she's been in nothing but uniform or training-friendly slacks. Grievously unlike her, but between S.H.I.E.L.D bullshit and the latest global blow out she hasn't exactly had time to get comfortable enough for a historically-accurate wardrobe. She feels awkward glaring through the thick lens of some (obviously blind) person's (stolen) glasses, smothered in corduroy pants and a baggy jacket shrugged over her gym shirt. Caroline reaches up, nervously dragging the brim of her baseball cap over her eyes. "What the hell are you _doing?_"

Klaus smiles, fingertips flying over the keyboard. "The file isn't opening, love."

"Are you fucking serious – "

"Patience," Klaus hums, like she's some overgrown arm seat pet that's misbehaving in his lap. "If we can't open the file, I'm running it through a tracer – S.H.I.E.L.D uses this to track hostile malware…" he trails off, suddenly realizing her deeply unimpressed silence. Klaus darts a look up at her face, his mouth thinning when she doesn't fall over her feet worshiping what is no doubt a genius move. "Well, seeing we can't read the file our next best shot is finding out where it came from."

Caroline opens her mouth and someone else speaks before she can rattle off her fingers the number of ways Klaus is wasting her time, "Can I help you guys with anything?"

She almost groans, but Klaus stands up to give the man behind her shoulder a beatific smile. She turns heavily to him, ready to stomp her feet. Middle-aged, soft round the middle, long, lank hair spilling over his shoulders and a friendly, inquiring smile. He wears a blue shirt, his nametag has a cheery scrawl proclaiming him an 'Eren.'

"Oh, we're just looking for honeymoon destinations," Klaus lies smoothly in accent-less American – and the change sends an unexpected trill through her, he has a warmer voice this way, affectionate, coming deep from the base of his throat, all husky and satisfied. His cheek dimples pleasantly, and Caroline's heart does a little, unexpected (infuriating!) flip, because he looks a different sort of man is his striped hoody. Someone younger, someone whose callouses might come from writing a screenplay in a coffee shop rather than handling Johnson Rifles and garrote string that slides between the fingers so fast the cuts it leaves _steam_. His hair tousles goofily over his brows in dark golden tones, a light scruff on his even jaw, his eyes a dim blue in the muted lighting of the electronic store, and this ability shouldn't keep shocking her, really. How effortless he can pull out his lines, looking for honeymoon destinations my fucking _ass_, you born-bullshitter. His smile is so big and _ecstatic_, shows the whites of his canines and if she was a _tiny_ bit stupider she could actually believe he was in love with her, like _really_ in love with her, like knock-you-dizzy, no-pre-nup, church-wedding _in love_ with her and hatred pumps up her ribs like a vicious flare in a dark, dark night.

Her hip knocks the edge of the display table, she doesn't realize what he's _doing_until Klaus's palm is a hot print on her side. Caroline's face freezes and every bone in her body locks in place. Klaus's hand stays, just above the swell of her hip, touching her like he's been doing it his whole life. His hand doesn't move, doesn't dip low, doesn't grope, and she still wants to punch him all the same but Caroline squeezes out a pathetically inauthentic smile. She attempts to sell it, this farce, even if her pulse is hammering, because no way is Klaus's hand around her waist, no fucking way is he touching her like he – like _he -_ her face_flames_. "I've been trying to get her to say yes for a long, _long_ time, so this has gotta be real special."

"Yeah," she bites down on her bottom lip to kill a shrill, claustrophobic giggle, and she realizes for the first time that this might be the only time Klaus is without gloves. That's why he's so _warm_. The heel of his palm slides away, but it feels slower than molten lava. Klaus returns to his typing, abandoning her to her lines, the bastard. She chirps on, wants to scream and laugh hysterically. "We're getting married."

_Ugh_.

"Congratulations!" Eren crows, delighted for these two lying strangers. Caroline's discomfort has obviously been bought as pre-wedding shy-bride antics, oh, Eren, you stupid, stupid man. "Where're you planning on going?"

She ducks away, looks at the screen over Klaus's shoulder. "New…Jersey?" _What._

"Uh," Eren says and Caroline nods emphatically. "Hey," he peers at her, and she keeps her place, every nerve alert. "…I have the exact same pair of glasses."

"Wow," Klaus says dryly, "You guys have so much in common."

Eren giggles, nervous. "Aw no, I already have a girlfriend." He squares off his palms to indicate Caroline's entire frame, and Caroline scowls, does not appreciate the impressed way he refers to her body. She's wearing five layers of fucking clothes, but figures a man's gotta find something to whistle at. "Well, if you need anything…just ask for Eren," and he flashes his nametag like a little badge. Caroline _really_ hopes the back wheel of his skateboard snaps when he's cruising back to his douchebag apartment.

When he leaves, Caroline's palm sits between Klaus's shoulder blades, floating up to the base of his hood where she digs in her nails. He grunts when she pinches the bunch of tendons there, _hard_. "You said nine minutes," She says, sweet as ice cream and cherry-pie and mindless, blathering oh-yes-darlings-how-fucking-high-darling? "Nine minutes ago, asshole."

"We're almost done," He wheezes back to sounding infuriatingly British, and she only relents when she sees the screen bleep with complex algorithms before zooming in, lining up their location like a target. Wheaton, NJ. She lets go of the thick fabric, fingers springing away. Klaus rolls his shoulders, limbers up his neck like a swimmer and looks at her curiously. "You know the place?"

"I…" Caroline licks her lips, feeling queer. "I used to."

She's ninety years old, time becomes separate, just as places do. She yanks the flash disk from the side of the laptop and moves away, and she really fucking wishes Klaus would stop looking at her like that, like he's got a million things ready to pounce off the tip of his tongue, things that are asking more than she's ready to answer, and knowing more than he lets on.

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><p>"Do you love him?"<p>

She brings up her arm just in time for the bullet to spark off her shield. Her curls whip above her ears, they're under enemy fire, she doesn't have her mask, she doesn't have a scrunchy, her best friend has dead eyes, and the Black Widow weaves out from behind the cover of tank, trotting merrily by her side.

Caroline tears away from the gunfire, the side of an expensive Porsche banging under her shoulder, and Klaus slides a clip into his gun, calm as you please, asking her if she loves the person _shooting_ at them.

She can pretend she didn't hear him, wouldn't be hard given that everyone on the street is screaming their fucking _heads_ off.

Josh can't hold the bastard off for long, but she catches her breath here. Contingency plans skipping through her head like pebbles on a lake, none of them make it very far. She can't _think_. Stefan's shooting at her. He's shooting at _her._

"Well?" Klaus rests on his haunches, it looks like he's asking for her orders almost. Except that she knows Klaus doesn't listen to anyone who isn't toting an eye-patch or KGB affiliations. Learnt her lesson the last time on the ship. He's balanced on his haunches, with her on cover behind this luridly purple Porsche and his hair looks windblown, like he's put his head outside a car window, and he's looking at her as bullets ricochet around their heads.

She'd like nothing more than for him to catch one in the head.

"Shut up," she manages between gasps. "I need to think."

Klaus's firearm hangs between his knees, wrist loosely motioning. "What's there to think about?"

Her heart's thumping again, slamming against her ribs, her vision narrowing. Like they're about to drop her again, with nothing but the strings of a parachute and a faulty automatic – she'd had the anthem singing in her veins, the adrenaline, the knowledge that she was fighting with the very best at her side, that wherever she went, the red crashing around her, the shrapnel and the tanks, there would be the blur of dark hair, whizzing right by, close as a razor. Stefan. Stefan always by her side.

Stefan who tore the hood off the armored car and proceeded to fling them into oncoming traffic.

_What's there to think about?_ He asks her, calm as a dandy in his tea room. Light drawl, relaxed study of her.

How to save him, how to put him down. If it's really him, if it's really _really_him. A boy falling into snow.

Klaus smiles at her, his lashes sweeping dark against the rise of his cheekbones, so long it was a wonder they didn't tangle every time he blinked. He's _smiling_at her and it cuts through the frost of her head like a tooth saw, he isn't laughing at her, even as they corners of his eyes crack. "You're too far away, Captain."

"What?"

"Maybe it isn't him." Klaus calls her back, nonchalantly bending back so he can peer over the hood. The gunfire's stopped, and Caroline knows exactly what that means. An opening.

His eyes flick back to her, his expression neutral, his gaze cool. Klaus scuffs his knee with the M9 "Maybe I'll take a closer look."

She lunges out an arm, fingers closing around air. Caroline snarls, her hand clenches into a fistful of nothing. He's already zipping over the hood, racing towards the chaos.

She rolls out from the car , her shield up, her teeth bared. Like _hell_ she's going to get left behind.

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><p>They should have thought twice about giving a girl super strength, thought before they decided that was at all wise. Caroline was strong before they put her through the machine, their mistake was thinking she'd die for them.<p>

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><p>"Go!" Josh roars, and she hesitates for precisely two seconds, and then none when his semiautomatic pummels the Hydra operative full of lead and a police car booms into fiery smithereens. The bridge gets further behind her, Caroline crunches across shattered windscreens and empty shelling and she leaves the hell of steel behind with Josh. Put her to sleep in one war, woke into the screaming next, but it's still disorienting – the noise, the sheer <em>anarchy<em> of air punching rifles, and the whistle of a missile. Caroline gulps, racing.

The thing with the Winter Soldier is that he destroys, is a machine. _Ghost stories_, Klaus had told her, hard and dismissive. But he'd lunged ahead anyway. The Winter Soldier wears a soviet star on the mercury of his arm and moves like lightning, devastating in a mere second, disappearing in a blink, and never striking the same place twice. There is silence where she goes, the gunfire behind her getting out of earshot and it's enough to make a fresh soldier frantic. She can only hear her breath pushing, punching, gasping out of her – breathing she should get under control, damn it - off-stage screams, the steady hiss from the engine of an overturned car. Where _are_ they?

Behind is the destruction of soldiers, down the street, people clearing out of the way, she can't _hear_ anything but she knows, knows it the way she knows that the fire escapes of Brooklyn are going to be slick with rainwater in the nighttime, that the moon is going to rise in six hours, forty-seven minutes and 38 seconds, like – like Klaus, gutting her the moment she proves inconvenient. She knows it. It's Stefan, that's him, murdering everyone, hunting through the grey dark smoke of fiery wreckage, pace sedate, purpose sinister and deliberate in the undertaking. She knows it's him, she isn't ready for it. She doesn't understand it. It doesn't help to know what she knows, or what she thinks she does, Stefan is here to _kill_.

Caroline's brows wrinkle, she follows the emptier streets, the blocks with the contents of handbags spilled on the cement, the blocks as deserted as a Texan ghost town and she thinks damn it, he's gotten_far_, very far for a person walks like he's taking his damn _time_ and she thinks that maybe she's wrong, maybe she's gotten the wrong way, is following the wrong street, but that can't be right, can it? She doesn't meet any Hydra operatives on the way and it is disconcerting, distresses her, because it that's true then Stefan's following off alone and for all she _hasn't_ seen of Klaus she knows that she's more than like to find them in the same place.

She runs around a corner, when a surge of humanity pushes past her, she brings up her shield, darting between them, dodging the disjointed limbs, the acrid stench of fear like piss in the air. They hurdle past her, Caroline thunders through, and on the other side she _sees_ them.

Klaus's head is a smattering of gold in a world toneless, colorless smoke. She hears her own breath, heavy, muffled, and sees the silver back like the sluice of a shark fin through water – Stefan, not Stefan, not _her_ Stefan, bringing up his firearm, barrel pointed right at the Black Widow.

She's crunching onto the hood of the car before he finishes the motion, shield rearing back. The Winter Soldier whips around, slams his knuckles on the surface and his foot connects against her rib cage with all the walloping force of a freight train. Caroline knocks back off the car, falling in a rush of disoriented color, body screaming, but Caroline rolls, ducks down and is already turtling behind her shield as the strongest gust of gun fire in the world empties its clip into the paint.

Her shoulder judders. Her teeth clench, her eyes shut tight. Not-Stefan, _the Winter Soldier._

She thinks her knuckles nearly break on thar armor. Stefan staggers aside, and she wastes his single second of disorientation to look for Klaus. She sees the sole of his boots drag beneath a jeep, and she thinks you bastard, with an incredible surge of wild annoyance, and widler relief.

Caroline picks up, comes at him again. Sparks lighting off the metal in burst of white flint. Hurtling like a boulder, up and up and up, and slams the edge of her shield into his shoulder. He responds with an elbow cut to her chin that near knocks her teeth out. Caroline slams the shield again, head ringing, and he closes his metal fingers around it, and _twists._

Her arms screams, nearly pulling out of its socket, but she lets her feet carry her up, tucking into the air. When she meets the floor again he pulls and her arm sliding from the leather strap of her shield as ridiculously easy as the jerk of a silk glove. The Winter Soldier kicks her, she feels three ribs crack and her back slam against the truck behind her.

Caroline looks at him with shell-shocked horror. The Winter Soldier holds her shield in front of him, has _disarmed_ her, and she feels more naked than ever. In her civilian wear without the distinguishing uniform, doesn't he know _who_ she is? Doesn't she –

He has a javelin arm, that boy. If she hadn't shot out of the way the discus throw of her shield would have sliced her head clear from her body. It thunks into the paint of the car, the star disappearing into the interior. Caroline's arm shoots for it, pulls at the edge and it barely budges before he's back at her, boot breaking the tarmac, knife spinning between his fingers.

She stumbles back from the thrown fist, preventing him from caving in her face, and for a ridiculous, bizarrely absurd _split_ second his knuckles only graze the very edge of her eyelashes. Caroline lunges, grabs his steel wrist and throws her legs upwards, catches his elbow with her thighs and _twists_. Her weight's unexpected, her momentum unsettles his footing and they hit the floor together.

The Winter Soldier grunts, Caroline rolls away but he catches her foot and drags her towards him. She turns on her back, her other boot catches him in the jaw before he can plunge his knife into her calf, but his steel arm doesn't - doesn't let go! She feels the tendons in her captured heel grind together and though wild with panic, she kicks at his knife in his human hand instead – it clatters across the tarmac and he drags her back, and lunges over her, his weight pinning her to the ground and his arm rising to break her head open. God,_ Stefan_, the breath pummels out of her, they'd fought before as children, spats full of mud and lousily thrown punches. On the rooftop opposite her apartment with Director Forbes bleeding to death, he'd thrown her shield back at her, and slipped away. He isn't baiting this time, she wants to see his face - the skin around his shattered goggles bleeds and his hair whips around his ear in lank snarls.

He...He doesn't punch her –

His arm hovers in the air, light sluicing off his knuckles like silver rain and Caroline's heart catches on too much hope, watches mesmerizes and gasping as he lowers his arm, slowly, deliberately, and she thinks maybe, maybe you know me now, maybe –

Metal fingers dig into her throat and her face tightens. She splutters, his knee dug into her ribs and his other hand poised behind him. He's strangling her, for _fuck's_ sake – Stefan! Spit bubbles on her lips, at the corner of her eye there's silver, her palm slaps the tarmac, fingertips keening but Stefan simply flicks the knife out of reach, and Caroline's face fills with blood and thwarted rage, and she cannot _believe_ - she balls up her fist hard and compact, punches at him once, twice, brings up an elbow and _shatters_ his head. He jerks away to the right, his goggles hit the floor and Caroline rolls for the knife, can hardly catch a breath, is barely to her feet before he's making for her again, the metal of his strangling hand glistening like a bullet and whipping at her.

Seeing his eyes has never mattered more. She licks her lips, a knock like that should have sent him into a concussion riddled sleep, but the Winter Soldier is a machine, and it is all she can do to stay clear of him – she's trying, she's trying to kick at him, to punch him, but it's like stepping into the path of a particularly sinuous train, and Caroline's throat is raw with all the time's she doesn't have the breath to shout his name, to shout stop. He's not going to. She can't reach him and trying is going to get her killed.

He's moving on his own, is not sweating, is not breathing hard. She makes a move at attacking him, aims a dagger throw at his thigh but he sweeps it out of the air the moment is leaves her fingers and it's back to stabby lunges again. Caroline's fast, but he's lightning quick. Everytime she steps clear it's in the bare wake of a silver arch of light before it becomes another she manages to escape by _inches_. He feints another sweep but punches her shoulder instead. Caroline lifts up her knuckles so the next slash bleeds across her forearms and she clicks her teeth together, _hard._

She cannot afford to remain on the defensive for long. Blood sweeps a warm flood down her elbows and she snarls grabbing his knife-happy wrist. Ducking her whole body, ramming her shoulder into his abdomen, he reacts quickly , but she shoves up, arms around his waist, and throws - Stefan flips behind her, rolling away. He rises, his sharp back, his lax shoulders and turns with his frightful, military elegance - and Caroline's body stills, her ribs compressing, her lungs crushed with shock.

His helmet lies in pieces on the floor. His eyes were still the same bottle-green she remembered, but his expression flat, like an automaton's, like a doll.

It shutters out of her, spills. "...Stefan?"

"Who the hell is Stefan?" He asks absently with the uninterested idleness of a child. Like he could care less for the answer, in Stefan's voice, with Stefan's face, and moving swift towards her, the knife sweeping -

The HEDP clips him in the shoulder like the fist of God.

Caroline brings up her forearm, shielding her eyes from the explosion of smoke. When it clears the shadow of Josh's wings darken the tarmac, and he whistles at the sight behind her. "You look like shit, let's go before worse shit shows up."

Caroline whips to face the source, and Klaus grins, sweat glistening on his brow, the SMAW slumping down from where he'd lodged it on his shoulder. He's pale, he's wounded -

HYDRA operatives swamp them and Caroline stifles a curse and bows her head. She hears helicopters, the media, finally useful. Brady hisses. "Don't kill her, they're watching."

She takes to her knees, numb as her wrists get cuffed behind her. She blinks, her eyes hot.

She'd figured losing Stefan was supposed to happen once, atleast. The first time he'd been captured, the second time falling - but it's the third time now. He doesn't even know who she is, he doesn't realize -

She's dragged to her feet, they shove her into the back of the military van. Klaus winces against her side, "So, was it everything you imagined it'd be?"

He's trying to make her angry. Caroline looks at him and hardly believes he's real. His bruised jaw, the blood cracked in his brow, his split lip - the ferocious, fever blue of his eyes as he loses blood. He'd sought Stefan out, he'd known him. Had chased down the street like he was indulging in a very dangerous game of tag.

"Shut the fuck up, Klaus," Josh sulks, taking advantage of Caroline's presence between them and Klaus's condition - he is out of throttling distance. "As soon as they get out of the city they're going to execute us. Where no one can see. They're going to give us unmarked graves. They're going to wipe us away like faulty operatives, like traitors. I did not sign up for your bullshit."

Caroline ignores him, doesn't flinch away from Klaus's eyes. She holds his gaze, she's not going to die, he isn't either - he doesn't _deserve_ the easy way out. He doesn't get to smirk at her like she should have known better, like he somehow knew more about Stefan than she did, like all the world's I-told-you-so's were brimming in his maliciously charming grin. Like he was _challenging_ her.

"You don't know him," she says, low. "You don't know _anything_."

"I know you," Klaus answers, infuriatingly simple. "That boy you loved is long gone."

"And the boy you know remains?" She hisses, "You don't know Stefan, you know the Winter Soldier."

"Do I?" Klaus hms, "Might be you should too."

She turns away from him, her wrists tight behind her back and speaks no more.

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><p>She thinks of Stefan falling, she thinks of the useless rush of distance soaring between them, and he falls to death, into the white abyss that swallows him up readily and without a sound. She thinks of Stefan falling, his eyes horror stricken, speaking to her as if from under layers of ice – like a silent film, the wind steals every sound away. Her fingers numb in the cold, stretched towards a chasm that doesn't drag her away. She thinks of life. Stefan falling and never landing. Her never seeing him land. A body broken by the plow of snow, a fall silent to her, as if he has been struck underwater.<p>

She can imagine he will never land.

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><p>.<p>

.

_**tbc**_


End file.
